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The Alabama GOP will host the first-ever presidential forum in the state tonight in the Alabama Theatre. Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have confirmed they will attend. Doors to the Alabama Theatre will open at 3:30 p.m. and the forum will begin at 5:30 p.m. The forum is open to the public and free. There are 2,000 seats in the historic Alabama Theatre and they will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. In addition to live streaming this event, FOX6 News and staff will live tweet from the Alabama Theatre. You may follow us from this story...

One day after a new jobs report suggested that the country’s sluggish recovery may at last be getting off the ground, former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on Saturday gave his strongest indication yet that he is pivoting away from economic issues and seeking to make inroads among voters on foreign policy and the issue of health care. ...“You hear now the media starting to say, oh well, looks like the economy is getting better,” Santorum told supporters Saturday night in Springfield, Mo., shortly after the Associated Press declared him the winner of the Kansas caucuses. “You know, the economy may...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hoped to lock down a victory in Kansas' GOP caucuses with two rallies Friday but faced grumbling from tea party activists for skipping their big rally in the state's largest city................. Some tea party members were frustrated that Santorum wouldn't attend their rally. They spent $25,000 to rent the Century II arena in downtown Topeka and expected 1,000 to 3,000 people to attend. "It seems like it is counterproductive to show up for an event that is going to have 300 people in an airplane hangar instead (of) 3,000 people in...

Reporting from Mobile, Ala.— Rick Santorum renewed his criticism of John F. Kennedy on Thursday night for saying during his 1960 campaign for the presidency that he believed “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” “That’s not America,” the Republican presidential hopeful told a crowd at an Alabama dinner banquet. “That’s France. That’s a naked public square where people of faith are out of bounds.” [SNIP] ......Santorum said he would continue to speak out on the importance of religion in public life. “Please pray for me that I do so more articulately in the future,”...

Rick Santorum’s Catholic faith is an obvious centerpiece of his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, and it is rare for him to speak without referencing his religious beliefs. It is also rare, however, to hear him speak about his particular church, St. Catherine of Siena, which he and his family have belonged to for at least a decade. Even his 2005 manifesto on his personal faith and politics, It Takes a Family, did not mention the church. I was curious to learn more about it, so last Friday morning, I attended a 9 a.m. Mass there. St. Catherine is...

A new poll released on the eve of Rick Santorum’s first campaign visit to Alabama shows the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania leading in the state Republican Party presidential primary. The statewide poll conducted by Alabama State University’s Center for Leadership and Public Policy showed 22.7 percent of likely Republican voters supported Santorum, who is scheduled to make campaign appearances Thursday in Huntsville and Mobile. Former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney trailed Santorum with 18.7 percent, followed by Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House from neighboring Georgia, with 13.8 percent. The telephone poll of 470 likely GOP voters showed...

....SenatorSantorum's other reference [to jobs] hits a level of self-absorption that even the patrician Mitt "I'm not worried about the very poor" Romney has not, at least when taken in context, come close to reaching: "Karen and I have seven children, ages 20 to three, not exactly the best time to be out running for president of the UnitedStates. We've given up our -- our jobs. We're living off our savings. Yeah, we're making a little sacrifice for a very, very big goal…" Yes, during his Tuesday evening speech, RickSantorum's only mention of someone losing a job was about him...

YOUNGSTOWN, OH - In an extremely tight race, Mitt Romney edged Rick Santorum in the Ohio Republican primary. With 96 percent of the vote counted, Romney was about 12,000 votes ahead of Santorum. Romney won Mahoning and Trumbull counties in close races and was blown out by the former Pennsylvania senator in Columbiana County. Regardless of the official outcome, Romney almost definitely will receive a majority of the state’s 66 delegates, in part, because of a failure by the Santorum campaign. Republican candidates are on the ballot twice in Ohio — once for 15 at-large delegates divided among the candidates...

Santorum 40% Paul 27% Romney 25% Gingrich 8% 78% of Precincts Reporting

This is NOT intended to be only a Rick Santorum thread. GOP conservatives need to work together to prevail over Mitt Romney, who is the lame GOP-e candidate. Conservatives need to cinch / clinch the GOP nomination ASAP! For the final decision of who should be the actual 2012 GOP nominee, this should be an end-of-August national convention decision, and NOT a Spring primary decision. Conservatives and the GOP as a whole need the extra time to make the best final decision about the nominee. Several weeks before the Iowa caucus, there was all of this discussion of having one...

.....Everywhere Romney goes, he gets the strong support of the manipulators of the political apparatus--the elected politicians, the party committee officials, the staffers who hope their bosses will stay in office, the pollsters, the paid political consultants and Republican-leaning pundits who want to keep their sources. Like Obama, these Republican politicos look down on Santorum as the embarrassing, ne'er-do-well sibling who doesn't know when it's time to leave. They find his surge of support by the dumb party faithful as an annoyance. In the same way, the party operatives see Newt Gingrich, the one-time Speaker of the U.S. House of...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum acknowledged today that he may have misstated President Obama’s position on education when he called Obama a snob for saying he “wants everyone in America to go to college.” In fact, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace pointed out that Obama actually asked every American to commit to a year of higher education – which could include community college, vocational training, or an apprenticeship. That is similar to what Santorum has said he supports. Santorum, on Fox News, said he “read some columns where at least it was characterized that the president said we should...

In a potentially ominous Super Tuesday setback for Rick Santorum, a campaign filing mishap in Ohio could leave him ineligible to be awarded 18 Buckeye State district delegates -- more than a quarter of the total at stake there, ABC News reported Friday. Ohio has 66 delegates total, with 63 at stake on Tuesday. Santorum failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts representing nine delegates because he didn't turn in names there. ABC News reported that in six other congressional districts, the former Pennsylvania senator's campaign submitted fewer names than required to be eligible for...

Short on money and staff, Rick Santorum needs help to remain a viable threat to front-runner Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. One strategist hopes it will come from another rival, Newt Gingrich. Top adviser John Brabender says Santorum's future may depend upon Gingrich leaving the race. The former House speaker is showing no signs of bowing out, certainly not before next week's Super Tuesday voting.

Rick Santorum is stretching his criticism of President Obama's advocacy of universal college attendance into a broader attack on college itself. Santorum has three college degrees, which provides a good indication of how seriously one should take his assault on what he is labeling as Obama's elitism. As with so many of Santorum's statements, this criticism contains a grain of perception smothered in reactionary dogma. [BIG SNIP] In a nation in which almost everyone aspires to upward mobility, how is this a winning political argument? Sure, colleges are hothouses of liberalism. They have been for generations. And yet Americans of...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has moved into an 18-point lead over rival Mitt Romney in Tennessee. Registered likely and early voters favored the former Pennsylvania senator over the former Massachusetts governor 38 to 20 percent, a poll by Vanderbilt University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions found. Read more on Newsmax.com

New Gallup polling shows the clearest picture yet of the great divide in the Republican Party that has been pushing Rick Santorum to the head of the class. Behind Santorum’s eight point national lead over Romney is a yawing gap in ideological support for the two candidates. Conservative support for Santorum stands at 42 percent, compared to 24 percent for Romney. Among those who attend church frequently, support for Santorum is at 44 percent and for Romney 22 percent. In the nation’s heartland in the Midwest and South, Santorum leads by 19 and 8 points respectively. It is only on...

Wish I had a nickel for every conservative who confidently predicted that the Arizona debate would, of course, feature obnoxious questions about birth control and the devil aimed at Rick Santorum. As it turned out, CNN’s John King did not ask “gotcha” questions and, for the most part, conducted a fair and informative debate. The debate moderated by King, along with other events of the past week, has resolved a question that has been swirling since the Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota primaries: Why not Santorum? There is much to like and admire about Rick Santorum. He did fine work enacting...

Even though I do like and respect Rick Santorum, I've already endorsed Newt Gingrich and don’t plan on changing over to Team Santorum. Still, Santorum is tops in the national polls, has a chance to pull off some big pre-Super Tuesday wins, and he could end up as the nominee. If that does happen, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. In fact, I have no qualms about saying that if it comes down to it, Rick Santorum would be a much preferable nominee to Mitt Romney. Why?1) Santorum is the most prominent socially conservative politician in America....

Leading in the national polls and within striking distance of scoring big victories in Michigan and Arizona next Tuesday, Rick Santorum is portraying himself as the little 'guy from a steel town' who will stop Barack Obama from accumulating regal powers. 'Back in 2008, the American public at a time of crisis went for a rock star that they believed could solve their problems, someone that they believed in to make a difference in their lives,' he said at the Maricopa County Lincoln Day lunch in Phoenix, Arizona. 'This election, Americans are going to go back to what we've done...